


you never know

by stellatiate



Series: anthologie [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:22:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7777687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatiate/pseuds/stellatiate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>maybe we could fall in love, you never know. </p><p> </p><p>-—katara & zuko, misc. zutara week 2016.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara is one of the only people to be so open and candid about touching his scar, though Zuko still feels like it is some internal part of him that should be guarded and private and intimate. It could stand to say, however, if anyone could get away with touching it, it would be the girl he almost died for.

It starts this way: Zuko hasn’t played these carnival games since he was a child, but Toph pulls on his sleeves and makes a scene and _threatens_ him, so he plays. And with Katara and Momo in tow, he’s not quite sure he can turn her down in front of an audience. The game seems simple enough. All he has to do is land three darts on a single target and he can come away with the stuffed ornamental dragon that Toph so desires. It should be an easy enough task for someone as skilled as Zuko, but he finds himself struggling a little more than they expect. His perseverance renders Toph calm, though he can’t ignore Katara’s worried hand on his back.

“That hard, huh, Sparky?” And even though he expects her voice to be patronizing, it is soft.

Zuko squints and lands a dart in the center. “It’s just a little hard to see.” The phrase brings a wry smile to her lips and his cheeks redden immediately. “Not that I know—I mean, I’m not _blind_ —”

“It’s your scar, though.” Katara’s voice nearly startles him, so when he feels her fingertips graze the corner of his eye, it’s all he can do not to flinch away from the gentle ocean touch. “It must be hard to see in your peripheral vision.”

He presses down the urge to pull her hand away even deeper down and waits until she drops it on her own. Katara is one of the only people to be so open and candid about touching his scar, though Zuko still feels like it is some internal part of him that should be guarded and private and intimate. It could stand to say, however, if anyone could get away with touching it, it would be the girl he almost died for.

Toph’s face crinkles. “I don’t need that stupid toy, anyway,” she huffs, blowing her hair, “and you’re the Fire Lord. You don’t have to play games, you can get whatever you want.” From her shoulder, Momo’s eyes are wide when she decides to stomp off. Zuko doesn’t have the heart to follow her, though he expects her to wreak havoc wherever she settles down next.

He almost finds sympathy for the lemur somewhere in his register of emotions. But then there is shock, because Katara is standing shoulder to shoulder with him, aiming darts at the same target. “I’m no Fire Lord,” she says, as she lands a dart in the center next to Zuko’s, “but I’ve had a few rounds of ice throwing under my belt, so I can get by.”

Katara’s next dart bumps between the other two to land in the center. And though the game attendant should wait for her next one, he hands her the prized dragon anyway, with a courteous smile aimed in Zuko’s direction.

“How long are you gonna hold onto this story?” Zuko asks when Katara offers him the prize, a grin stretching across her lips.

“Probably a few weeks,” she links arms with him and glances over, something soft in the way she looks over his face studiously, “as long as you promise to come ice throw in the South Pole when I leave.”

It ends this way: Zuko knows he won’t break her promise, because there may not be a place where she can go that he won’t follow.


	2. reincarnation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He _can’t_ kill this girl, he can’t kill Katara. Her name, echoing in the air, is all he can hear when he thinks of standing up and confronting her. Parts I thru IV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by **[this prompt](http://stellatiate.tumblr.com/post/148845786965/writing-prompt-s-you-constantly-have-near-death)** , and because it's a reincarnation, you know i got really long-winded. i split it into two parts as well.

**i.**

“I’m going to tell Father,” she whispers into his ear, and it takes all of his resolve to trap the startled noise between his warm lips. Zuko knows he isn’t supposed to use the looking glass for anything other than reapings, but ever since their father told him of his first reaping, he hasn’t been able to stop looking at her.

She can’t be any older than his own sister, with brown skin and bright eyes that reflect the snow where she lives. Every time Zuko peers into the looking glass to see her, she is playing with her brother and curling into her mother’s side and _smiling_. He’s never seen someone smile the way she does, like it could break her teeth with the force if it were not as genuine.

But with Azula at his back, Zuko simply steps away from the stone fountain, pulls his hand from the dry water so that the image ripples away in the tiny waves.

“Father says we should only look to find the ones we need to kill.” Azula’s voice is a haunting melody as she watches the slump in his shoulders with a particular interest. “Looking any more than that—”

“I know, I know.” Zuko frowns in annoyance at his sister and sets himself to look for his Father. With his first reaping only hours away, he needs the focus to cleanse away the image of her eyes.

 

**ii.**

It isn’t his first time in the mortal world. As soon as Zuko turned five, his father began to insist he come with him for reapings. The world seems so much larger when he is younger, when he thinks of living in a place where the sun bears down heavily onto its people, or where the sand meets the sea and everything smells of the ocean. But touching down into the snow sets a chill deep into his bones that he can’t quite shake off. Being other worldly doesn’t protect Zuko from much, except from sight of those who don’t believe in him.

His father often tells him that only those who believe in the entity of Death would see him—only those, and the ones who are about to die. Here on the ice, though, it feels as though most of the people look through him. Their faces are round and glowing from their clothes, lined in snowy fur and colored like the ocean.

“Humans,” he mumbles, stalking through the tundra, “all of them look so similar.” The women are either willowy with gentle faces sitting around a fire or elderly and bent with displeasure in the lines of their wrinkles. The men are all strapping and broad shouldered, with fierce faces and long hair. Zuko doesn’t think he can distinguish any of them from the other, especially when he is supposed to be only searching for one of them.

“Katara!” A little boy rockets past him with the sides of his head shaved. Zuko briefly wonders whether they are accustomed to the cold the same way that the people of the tropics are familiar to the heat when he sees her running behind him.

Her eyes are even more luminous in person.

 

**iii.**

The knot in Zuko’s stomach settles because he _can’t_. Crouching down at the back of her icy castle of a home, he draws his fingers in idle patterns in the snow. He _can’t_ kill this girl, he can’t kill Katara. Her name, echoing in the air, is all he can hear when he thinks of standing up and confronting her. For a brief moment, Azula’s warning swims to the back of his mind.

 _Looking any more than that will compromise your reaping, and spoil you with sympathy_. His father’s words, through the mouth of his little sister. Zuko knows he shouldn’t have, but he has never witnessed the reaping of a young child before, never really seen anyone up close that was his age.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Zuko _shrieks_. There’s no way to mask the noise as anything else, so he feels himself flooding with embarrassment as he stands up. Katara is standing there with a blanket folded over her tiny arms, her eyes sparkling. Up close, he can see that they’re blue—most people in this tundra have blue eyes, but the warmth he feels around her makes them seem different than everyone else’s. Her hair is long, twisting into a plait that disappears into her jacket.

“I’ve never seen you before, are you a Spirit?” Her little hands push the blanket forward and Zuko stares at it as if she’d offered him something repulsive instead. She doesn’t withdraw her offer, though, and his fingers twitch at his side. He wants to reach out. He knows he shouldn’t.

“I _am_. And I don’t get cold.” He watches Katara’s mouth shape around surprise, and she stuffs her hands further into the blankets as she drops her arms.

For a few moments, they simply stand there, staring at one another. He wonders how he must look to her—a child spirit manifested in the middle of her isolated home. Rather, outside in the back of her home, trying to find a way to get away with sparing her life.

“Gran Gran says to be kind to spirits.” Katara is smiling, again. He doesn’t know how she can find anything to smile over, in the presence of a spirit. Zuko doesn’t understand how humans don’t live in terror of the unknown on a daily basis. She doesn’t even _know_ what’s going to happen to her. “So, if you need me, just come find me.”

Zuko stares at her as she disappears around the side of the igloo.

He decides to give it one more day.

 

**iv.**

The black snow rains down overhead and Zuko knows that this is the moment. Sitting outside the front of her igloo, he knows it is the day that Katara will be killed, and he must be there to take her away. The rising panic of those who live in her tundra drowns out his thoughts long enough. He watches them; some of them run to fight while the rest of them scatter to protect the children.

Katara and her brother are _not_ protected. The only person inside of the igloo is Katara’s mother, a woman with a soft face and eyes that remind him of hers, and a metal soldier. He can’t afford to feel this much, so Zuko simply sits and waits for Katara to return. There is nothing he can do if she dies out of his sight, except to take her soul and escort it right down to his father.

But she comes hurtling past him; for a brief moment, he thinks her eyes connect with his as she runs into her home, but he turns away at the thought.

“Just let her go and I’ll give you the information you want.” Katara’s mother’s voice trembles, and Zuko shuts the trembling voice out of his mind. This must be it; he suspects the metal soldier will keep Katara, and he’ll have to hurt her. It’s not his job to know why, though he has to tamp down the curiosity bubbling in his chest. He _wants_ to know why. She’s so young.

Instead, he hears her mother tell her to leave. Zuko stands as Katara stumbles past him and this time, her eyes are most definitely on his. She stops in the snow, tears tracking down her face.

“Help me,” she pleads with Zuko. His eyes widen at the sight of her, and he backs away into the snow with his hands up. “Please, I don’t know you, but I—I’ve always respected the Spirits, and I just—I need _help_ , my mom needs help!”

Her eyes are full of tears that keep falling, and Zuko doesn’t want her to die this way. Crying and pleading for help from the very person who is here to witness her death.

“I can’t, Katara. I can’t help you.” Her name slips into his mouth and out in the air between them in a fluid motion. It feels easy, though Zuko has been practicing the syllables in his mind. It sounds different when he says it, but he is _sad_. Part of him is glad that this is first reaping, that he is alone without the overbearing pressure of his father at his back, pushing him to take what is rightfully his to take.

The feeling that settles into Zuko like a glow is a familiar one. It is the feeling his father describes as ‘the freeing of the world’. It is the expression he uses to describe the way the world feels lighter when there is one less person on it, when someone has died. He doesn’t say anything, though. He knows there is someone here for his reaping.

He’s glad it isn’t Katara.


	3. memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out, in Zuko’s terrible luck, that Katara already knows who he is. And she hates him. Parts V thru X.

**v.**

“I heard about your _girl_ , Zuko.”

It’s been years, but her face floats effortlessly to the forefront of his mind. Zuko turns and glances at his father, a lazy look in his eye to mask the slight terror he feels. He was just a child, then—fascinated with the mortality of a young girl. Katara’s mother dies instead of Katara, and Zuko carries on with his life in the hopes that things don’t change too much.

Still, though. He doesn’t like the way his father is looking at him. “I’m shocked that you kept this from me for so long,” he runs a hand across Zuko’s shoulders, leads him over to the looking glass. The fountain, cracked and crumbling with age, still gleams with the reflection of the dry water on its surface. His father dips his hand into the fountain, pulls images of the girl he’d spared.

Or so he’d thought.

The first to rise to the surface is her, with her round face and bright eyes. Tears are tracking their way down her cheeks and she throws herself into her father’s arms, weeping. She is so small and defenseless, it brings back a memory of her pleading with him right before her mother had been taken away. _My mom needs help_!

His father presses on, stirring the image until it is a taller image of Katara. Her face still contains its baby softness, but the line of her body is almost willowy, now. He can’t imagine she’s much older than ten, with a face that seems set in maturity. Zuko watches her as she sits at a table, pulling shreds of blue ribbon from around a gem. Her fingers are careful when she replaces it with a smooth, new ribbon of the same color. Zuko doesn’t miss the way her fingers ghost over the pendant, the way her fingers clench for a brief moment.

“She doesn’t look like you’ve spared her.” His father’s voice is smooth, but venomous. The next image of her is strange to him. There is an angry tilt to her features and he watches her wield water in her hands; her victim is a boy slightly older than her, plastered to a tree trunk and encased in ice. The fury in her eyes taints all of Zuko’s memories of the happy little girl with sky-blue eyes, and he finds himself turning away.

“Azula told me you might’ve been spoiled,” he frowns, but there is nothing but pity in the lines of his face, “but I didn’t want to believe that my _loyal_ son, my _prized child_ could ever fall so far from his father’s teachings.” The hand that drags itself over his shoulders is now curled into his shoulder, fingers pressing into his skin.

Zuko squirms, and turns to his father with a glare. “She didn’t need to die! So many of them don’t need to die!”

“Is it your place to determine that, son?” His father’s grip tightens to a painful stab in his shoulder. “You don’t get to have a say in this! You don’t get to decide who lives and who dies!”

With a jerk, he presses Zuko’s face closer to the looking glass. The seemingly still reflection morphs and his father smirks. “If you want to make sure your precious girl is alive, do it yourself.”

It’s the last thing he hears before his father holds his face in the fountain; everything goes black after that.

 

 **vi**.

Zuko doesn’t really mind being spoiled. The word itself is sour on his tongue, as if he’d simply gone bad and hadn’t been bad all along. He knew that his sister would always have been more suited to reaping than he could ever be; there was just something cold and calculating about Azula that left no room for mercy. But Zuko—perhaps he’d been spoiled from the day he was born.

Adjusting to human life is different, though. He can feel the stretches of his own mortality when he runs his hands along the inside of his wrists and feels the blood flowing there. He feels the fire and how it curdles in the bottom of his stomach. His life now is the life of a forsaken Prince, as if he has always existed in this world and did not simply come to be.

The memories of his human life come to him in daydreams and passing thoughts. Zuko travels and tries to find traces of the girl he’d met once upon a time, reconciling himself with the cruelty of his father and the ruthlessness of his sister. One night, he sits awake around a fire, trying to control his breathing with the thoughts of a golden dais full of fire and the wrathful face of his father. Several weeks later, he is graced with the face of his mother—one long since absent from his mortal and otherworldly life—she is soft and kind to his memories, full of warmth and smiles and love.

Sometimes it’s difficult for Zuko to navigate this new world when he is completely alone; it would be easier if he had the looking glass with him still, if he could simply touch the surface and be granted vision of Katara, wherever in the world she was. It proves to be a fair bit more difficult to protect her if he cannot find her, though he promises himself to never stop looking.

 

**vii.**

It turns out, in Zuko’s good fortune, that Katara already knows who he is.

The relief that pours across his face when he finally stumbles across her and a group of her friends settles into him with a heavy pressure in his bones. She looks different; she is a little taller and where he’d once thought of her as willowy, seemed to have more curvy lines to her figure. Her hair is much longer, curled and tangled by the heat. For a moment, he thinks he sees some recognition in her eyes—not for this mortal Prince, but for the young boy he’d been when he’d first met her.

It turns out, in Zuko’s terrible luck, that Katara already knows who he is. And she hates him.

“Wait, I—” He doesn’t get much out in the way of pleading with her, because he’s shot with a cannon blast of water and knocked to the ground. The anger she exudes is almost palpable, and some of her friends look down on him in pity. None of them speak, though; they simply follow behind the furious water-girl without any other questions.

Zuko knows he most certainly has some work to do; whatever lies between the two of them in their past is deeply rooted in some memories he has yet to uncover. It seems almost unreal, that he has memories of Katara that aren’t drawn from the looking glass, but he should have known better than to expect this life to be any easier for him. Things have never quite been easy for him.

Wandering leaves him in the woods outside of where Katara sets up camp with her friends, and Zuko finds himself attentive to all of the nature around him. The trees bend overhead as the sun dapples across the leaves, and for a moment, he can appreciate the sight of it. After all, Zuko had done many reapings in many different places on the Earth up until his father had considered him spoiled. He’d seen parts of the world he’d never knew existed.

But as a human, marveling in the beauty of nature seems more poignant, easier to cherish. The small pond in the clearing ahead catches all of the sun’s rays and reflects them into the air, making it almost glow in his presence. Zuko approaches the water and kneels down, staring at his reflection in the surface. The smooth quality almost reminds him of the looking glass, and he touches his hand into the pond out of muscle memory.

It’s wet. Nothing like the looking glass, whose dry water only soaked with visions and clarity. Zuko still feels something, though; right on the tip of his tongue, there is something waiting for him to be said, a thought hanging on the edge of his mind’s cliff.

“Why are you still here?”

Her voice doesn’t startle him the way he expects it to. Katara’s eyes refract the surface of the pond because she focuses on it so closely. Zuko isn’t surprised that she’s drawn to it; it seemed to draw him in, too, for whatever reason. But then her eyes are turned onto him, sharp and full of hurt.

“I—” _I want to protect you_. _I know they’re going to hurt you_. “I just want to help you. I should have helped you before.”

He expects her to be angry. Instead, she kneels down beside him. The mud crushes into her clothes, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Zuko notices the water rippling in a rhythmic motion now that she is so close by.

“I know you,” she says softly, with her fingers over the edge of her pendant. “I didn’t think it was possible, though.” Her eyes are focused on him intently. Zuko thinks they aren’t quite what he remembers them to be, but still hold a candle of fierceness within them.

Explanations bubble on his lips, but none of them are fitting. He can’t exactly tell her that he was supposed to let her get killed instead of her mother, that his own desires to see her live is what caused them to take her away. He can’t explain why he’s here now, in the body of someone she may already know, with none of the memories.

“What can I do?”

Almost instantly, her shoulders lift into a shrug. “I don’t know. I still don’t trust you.”

 _You shouldn’t._ “I understand.” Zuko’s fingers skim over the surface of the water, mimicking the ripples that Katara makes simply with her chi. Her hands crawl through the mud until both of her palms are in the water, and then it glows.

Zuko closes his eyes, and begins to remember.

 

**viii.**

The memories sear through his mind at an alarming rate. He can barely hold onto them before they shift into new ones, faded around the edges. There is one with his mother cradling him close to her chest and he can feel the warmth in his own chest from her embrace, but it quickly dissolves into him sobbing on the floor of a ship, his face bandaged and burning. He sees Azula, almost like his own sister in the other world; she is sharper, though. More dangerous. He sees himself fight with her, sees himself tuck her in after nightmares.

Zuko doesn’t see how he gets his scar, but he feels it. The sensation of the skin rubbed raw underneath cloth bandages and salve doesn’t go away throughout the entirety of his memories, and though he can see which memories are before the scar and which are after, none of them rid him of the phantom pain of it.

It’s sad, that this Prince’s life is split into the moments before and after he was irrevocably damaged.

Zuko draws his hands out of the water slowly, his eyes wide and alert. From his side, Katara is staring at him. He doesn’t know whether she’s seen anything for herself, but he’s seen quite enough. He wipes his hands on his pants and gets to his feet.

“Hey, wait.”

He can’t wait, though. Not with all of this heavy on his mind. Zuko disappears into the trees as fast as he can and hopes that she isn’t too upset with him.

 

**ix.**

_I know. You could bring my mother back_. He barely hears her rustling outside of her tent until she stops in front of him. The sun is blotted out overhead, now, so he takes the chance of opening his eyes.

“You look terrible,” she says pointedly, and moves past him.

“I waited out here all night.” His eyes hurt but he stands up and tries to blink the lingering ache away. Katara turns away from him and runs her fingers through her hair, glancing back at him every few seconds. Things are strange between the two of them; part of Zuko is the unruly Prince she’s always had conflict with and the rest of him is the other worldly child who stole her mother from this world and away from her family.

He doesn’t wait for her to ask. “I know who killed your mother. I can help you—”

“No.”

He’s so shocked by her response that his jaw falls slack at her rejection. With all of the anger he feels coming from her, he can’t help but feel as though it is the only thing that can bring her closure. But now that she’s turned him down, he’s not sure if anything can help alleviate the damage he’s done.

“I already know who killed her,” her gaze falls to her feet, and Zuko’s cheeks burn with shame, “and I’m allowed to be angry about it, you know? Just—just give me some time to deal with it.” Katara pulls her comb out of her bag and then disappears into her tent, worrying the tines through her hair as she goes.

Zuko sits back down on the rock he’d fallen asleep on and frowns. It’s never settled in fully, but her words sink into the bottom of his stomach with unease. If anyone has Katara’s mother’s blood on their hands, it is most certainly him. Even though he knows that one of the two would have died, it doesn’t mean it was any less his fault. What would the world be like if he’d simply let fate run its course?

Thinking about the state of the world and Katara as a companion to the Avatar almost convinces Zuko that it was the right decision.

Almost.

 

**x.**

The lightning flickers in his eyes for a split second. Zuko, whether a reaper or a prince, knows how powerful his sister is. Fighting her is the most natural thing he has done since he’s become spoiled and no longer has the responsibilities of a reaper, because her tenacity and reflexes are how he remembers her. Perhaps there is too sharp of a parallel between this world’s version of his sister and the one that he knows.

In that moment, the words slip across his mind. _If you want to make sure your precious girl is alive, do it yourself_. The lightning crackles, and at the last second Azula aims it past him. Zuko can feel his heart dropping into his stomach at the sight of it because he knows where its true target is.

He knows that this is what he’d always wanted to avoid.

_I just want to help you. I should have helped you before._

Zuko doesn’t think about it any further; he simply leaps.


	4. lilac

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “[You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11566).” In the end, he holds out the container for Katara’s hand.

“What are you doing?”

The courtyard is quiet with the exception of the wind through the foliage and the sounds of the birds, so it catches Zuko by surprise that Katara is able to sneak into the gardens without him noticing. In his lap, his daughter blinks down at the grass and rustles in his grip. Zuko tilts his head back to look at her, still. Dressed in her familiar ocean blues, the sun makes the sight of her even more refreshing.

“Making something for Izumi.” Katara sits down beside him in the grass and leans over to peek at his project. There are two containers full of thick, violet liquid that sits dangerously close to the toddler’s grasp. “It’s a clay cast. My mother made one for me when I was a child.”

Zuko takes one of Izumi’s hands carefully and presses it down into the mold. He can feel Katara’s eyes tracking his movements as he slips a palm underneath the container and lets the heat from his hand seep into it. The liquid glows for a moment, a molten, gentle purple that reminds him of the flowers that surround them. After a few moments, he lifts her tiny hand from the center and marvels at the little print in the mold.

“That’s cute,” Katara smiles, ghosts her fingers over the edges of the handprint, “I think she’ll like it, too.”

He smiles and holds his hand out to one of the containers. “I can make you a handprint mold, if you like.” Katara looks down at the mold and Izumi crawls across his legs, pinching her fingers intermittently with the feeling of the mold on her tiny palms.

In the end, he holds out the container for Katara’s hand. It fits snugly inside and she wiggles her fingers when she immerses them, grinning. The purple liquid covers her hands briefly while he holds his heat to help form the mold.

“This feels funny,” she laughs softly when Zuko grasps her wrist and lifts her hand out of the mold carefully. In his grip, he carefully peels off the soft, lilac mold from her fingers. The touch feels impossibly intimate, so much that Katara’s cheeks flood with color. After he seems content with his clean up, he collects the two dishes and lifts Izumi in his arms.

“Hey,” Katara calls, a noise that attracts Izumi’s vivid golden stare, “you’re going to take my handprint?”

Zuko looks down at the shape of Katara’s hand in the mold and pictures the feeling of her hand in his caring palms. When he looks back towards her, the smile on his lips is warm and personal and means more than he can find the words to say.

“It’ll be something to remember you by.”


	5. fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re pretty aggressive,” he notes with a mixture of annoyance and wonder as he presses his hands into his clothes to dry them, “for a waterbender.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by [**this lovely piece**](http://cutefluffydino.tumblr.com/post/149167122901/), it helped me out of a little block for this week.

It starts out innocently enough. On the night when the stars are fading and Katara is still tethered to the dock, Zuko keeps her company. He joins her at the edge of the pier, his presence offering a physical warmth that seems to keep her calm. They are silent at first, but then Zuko gets to his feet, the boards of the dock creaking underneath the weight. He looks down at her through the slips of moonlight between the clouds and sighs gently.

Only, Katara siphons a stream of water into her palms and tosses it at him with a flick of her wrists.

The affronted look on his face manages to bring a hard won smile to her lips, and the soft sounds of her laughter in the night air seem to lend her some mercy from her companion.

“You’re pretty aggressive,” he notes with a mixture of annoyance and wonder as he presses his hands into his clothes to dry them, “for a waterbender.”

She narrows her eyes at him and follows suit, standing until she’s facing him again. A familiar parallel of earlier, with the sun setting behind the two of them and her heart full of mixed emotions. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Zuko raises his hands in armistice and shrugs his shoulders. “Nothing bad.” He looks at her so closely that his eyes almost fill with light, almost appear to glow in the midnight. “You just remind me of someone.”

Katara’s cheeks heat almost instantly and she hopes that the color doesn’t show. Circling her arms, she pulls streams of water from beside her and alternates throwing them towards Zuko. At first, she watches his eyes widen as one blasts into him, but each subsequent arc of water gives him time to shift out of the way.

It isn’t until she calls more water that he even begins to light fire in his hands.

…

This is how they pass the time between them, now. Katara finds it useful, because she learns so much about how Zuko vents his frustrations. There is so much hurt in the lines of his bending. When they spar and something is on his mind, she almost always loses from the sheer erratic nature of his fire.

But then there is the aftercare, where he sits down with his knees bumping into hers, smelling of smoke and sweat. He is careful to skim his fingertips over her arms and neck and legs to make sure there are no burns, that his emotions haven’t flared too much. Katara doesn’t tell him how this reminds her of the black sky rituals done in her homeland, where husbands and wives would caress each other’s skin to make up for the absence of the power of the moon’s glow.

Zuko’s touch is warm, though. She tries to erase the intimacy from the closeness of it all and is more than willing to attribute it to the fact that maybe Zuko is a lot gentler than his fire and his past has made him out to be.

…

It isn’t until Aang abandons them that Katara’s sparring behavior mimics his. She wants to cry, but the weakness of it makes her angry instead. Each crest of water she can throw at him is matched by swells of flame shaped like ocean waves, fluid and curved to press the water into steam.

They keep fighting until Zuko is the first to fold, snapping his wrists to dispel of the fire and heaving through the thick air. Katara wonders if the approach of the comet does something to him and the state of his bending the way other phenomena of nature can. She doesn’t want to ask, though. Her heart is pounding in her chest and she’s afraid to say anything for fear of saying everything.

Zuko approaches her the same as he does every night, with a careful hand extended to the curve of her bare shoulder, ready to gently guide her to her knees so he can make sure she’s okay.

This time, Katara doesn’t bend. She slips her hand underneath his so that it presses against his cheek, her fingers floating along the edges of his scar. Zuko doesn’t flinch or react in any of the ways that she expects him to, but maybe it’s because she’s touched his scar before. Katara wonders whether anyone else has ever touched it.

He kisses her before she can ask him about it any further. His mouth is warm and his skin is flushed, slowly cooling against her palms. Her hand climbs to the back of his head and knots itself there, when he presses his hands around her waist. Even in his kiss, she can feel his hands searching her skin for damage, still cradling her close to make sure she’s okay.

When he pulls away from her, she feels unbearably warm.

 


	6. coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That’s something we have in common,” she says with a firm nod, “but in other news, don’t you want to know what I made for you? I hope you like it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a continuation of a [**coffee shop au**](http://stellatiate.tumblr.com/tagged/barista-au/chrono) i started a long time ago, but it stands alone well enough.

“Can I have your name for the order?”

Her voice sounds so familiar that it brings Zuko out of his reverie. The torrential downpour of rain outside the large, glass windows of the brewery held his attention for so long that he’d been standing in front of the counter with his eyes still locked onto the dark sky. But when he turns his head back towards the voice, his cheeks flood immediately.

“Zuko.” It’s funny, because he’s known her name for weeks, and is just now telling her his own. Katara smiles at him and disappears with a cup covered in labels, and he walks the short distance away where he’ll pick up his drink. It dawns on him briefly that he hadn’t mentioned to her what he wanted to drink, but she’s already started brewing something in one of the kettles so he simply leans back against the wall.

“Not a fan of the rain?” She asks. Zuko glances over at her and notes with a private smile that she’s shorter than most of the equipment behind the glass, so only her eyes peek out from between each machine as she moves. Her hair is pulled back, but the curls look mostly dry if not a little frizzed from the weather.

Zuko blinks and focuses on her question. “I don’t mind it. Reminds me of home, my mother always thought rain was the best weather for gardening.”

The little slice of information causes Katara to poke her face out so he can see her smiling sweetly at the thought. “My mother used to garden, too. We always sat inside when it rained, though.” She flits back behind the machinery, clicking a few buttons and then starting the blender. After a few moments, she slides from behind the counter and sidles over to where he’s standing. Zuko registers that there’s only one other person in the brewery with her, and they’re deeply entrenched in something that appears to be inventory in the back.

The conversation lulls for a moment as he decides whether or not he wants to share more than necessary. “No, my mother used to get sick a lot because she’d be out in the rain. So, it doesn’t really bother me. It just makes me think of her.” His voice is soft, and he hopes it doesn’t give too much away.

If it does, Katara doesn’t indicate it. “That’s something we have in common,” she says with a firm nod, “but in other news, don’t you want to know what I made for you? I hope you like it.”

Zuko hadn’t thought about it at all, until she skips back to pour the contents of the blender into a large cup. He watches her cover the top of it with whipped cream and then drizzle something over it. She sticks another label to the cup and then grins, sliding it over the counter. Glancing down at the cup, Zuko is able to track down some of the abbreviations; one of them familiarly indicates that it’s a macchiato, and there are a few more printed to let him know the flavors within.

However, there’s a label with his name written in careful script, and one pressed over it with what he thinks is a barcode print. Further inspection actually brings a blush to his cheeks, because the familiar style is in that of a telephone number. In tiny print below, it says: _'Something sweet for someone sweet.'_

 

 


	7. candles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I just wanted to feel like I could have something good in my life for a little bit.” She wonders if she predicts her line of questioning or whether he is simply so lost in his memories that he is iterating them without a reason. “When things get really bad, I just want the universe to let me have something good for myself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys for indulging me this zutara week!

Zuko says, “I had a date here once.”

Ba Sing Se is beautiful with the setting sun casting off of the stone, rippling across the sky with all of its colors. Katara considers herself lucky that she’s friends with the one person who can save her from the presence of stuffy, misogynistic politicians for the majority of her time in the city. Their early evening walks have become the highlight of her week of international diplomacy, though they leave room for moments like this.

“You’ve dated someone from the Earth Kingdom?” Katara tilts her head up to look at him with a curious smirk, as if she can picture him here with a girl, trying to impress her. The look on her face helps the blush on his cheeks to spread up to the tips of his ears.

The courtyard they’ve stopped in is cobbled with uneven stones that are cracked in some places. At the center, there is a wrought stone fountain, wide and stacked with three tiers of flowing water. Katara feels the flow of it before she can see it closely, how it pushes from the bottom to spray out of the top and trickle its way back down again. In the water is a delicately arranged candelabra with the same thick iron that makes up the lanterns that surround the fountain.

“Briefly,” Zuko notes, and walks further into the courtyard. She watches him crouch down at the edge of the fountain as if he’s thinking of leaning into it, but he turns and sits down on the rim. His eyes scan the panorama of the scene with a smile teasing at his lips. “It was a really rough time for me, living in this city.”

Katara approaches him and leans forward with her hands on his knees, her face dangerously close for a split second. “Did you kiss her?”

He doesn’t pull back the way she expects. Instead, he stares into her eyes. Katara feels her heart rocket into a fast pace until she draws back from him, patting the backs of her hands onto her cheeks cautiously. _What the_ hell _was that?_

“I lit all of the lights for her.” Zuko is still staring at her and it does her heart no favors. “I kissed her back, too.”

The idea of a young, vulnerable Zuko locked in a kiss with an eager, happy Earth Kingdom girl causes her to battle with some unsightly emotions in the pit of her stomach. Katara pushes them down and decides to sit beside him, careful to keep her distance. Close proximity to Zuko seems to be throwing her mind for a loop, and she quite needs to be in control of it for now.

Before she can open her mouth, he speaks again. “I just wanted to feel like I could have something good in my life for a little bit.” She wonders if she predicts her line of questioning or whether he is simply so lost in his memories that he is iterating them without a reason. “When things get really bad, I just want the universe to let me have something good for myself.”

Katara folds her hands into her lap and wonders whether this is subliminal. They’d had more than their fair share of moments, especially when Katara thought she’d be leaving to go to the South Pole and would never see him again. She’d said some really intimate things in those few weeks after he’d taken lightning for her, and she’d outline her life with an idea of Zuko being part of it.

But she’d left and he’d let her so maybe there were still more moments to be had. “You should light them now. You always deserve to have something good,” she lays her hand over his knuckles, squeezes the edge of his hand.

Katara turns to look at him at the same time that Zuko turns to look at her, and now they’re _that close_ again, the kind of close that makes her go haywire. Zuko slips his hand out of hers so quickly that she almost recoils, but she feels the pressure of his hand against her cheek, his thumb on the underside of her jaw.

He kisses her, and Katara thinks he’s simultaneously lit all of the candles in the courtyard at once.


End file.
